Wednesday 9 January 2008

Tag! I'm it dag-nab-it!

Having been tagged by Dan Norris, here are 8 random things about me:
  • Before I started down the heady road of IT, for 6 years I used to push trolleys, scrubbed meat rooms, and cut fruit and veg at the local "SupaValu" supermarket. My most favourable memory was finding a tree frog in the lettuce bin. My least favourite task was emptying the meat room's grease pit once a week. The most important lesson I learned: while the customer is always right, they're only buying milk and bread, so it's pretty trivial all round really.
  • I'm a "2.5 generation Australian", with Scottish heritage before that. In fact along with my Scottish surname Muir, my middle name is Campbell, which was my mother's maiden name (oops, there goes one of my password security questions!). My Scottish heritage probably explains my long pockets.
  • My parents were early outback teachers in central Australia, teaching at aboriginal settlements like Yuendumu (pronounced u-n-da-moo).
  • Before I reached high school, I'd attended 11 primary schools in and around Australia.
  • I've lived and worked in Pittsburgh USA, London and Marlow on Thames UK.
  • I've been a programmer all my adult working life, and started out many years ago working on a C++ real-time distributed database for Westrail, a defunct Western Australian State government railroad agency. The project was eventually canned after millions of dollars of tax payers' money and several years development, a whole generation of programmers burnt out, and probably the best learning exercise ever on how not run an IT project. The term IOCS still lives in infamy in programmer circles in Perth.
  • I'm a sucker for British comedy, including the Goons, Yes (Prime) Minister, Douglas Adams, Monty Python, Terry Pratchett, Rumpol of the Bailey, Coupling, Green Wing, Black Books, and so on. "If it ant British, it ant funny."
  • I've 4 pleasures in my life, of which my partner Jenny and my toddler daughter Emily are the 2 most important, while cycling and reading are the other simpler 2. I'm still working on a daring plan to combine all 4, but might have to wait until Emily is old enough to read and Jenny will agree to do all the work on a tandem.
I'm going to cop out like Justin and only "tag" 6 bloggers as I know a couple others I would have chosen are already "it". So tag, you're it: Andrejus Baranovski, Doug Burns, Tim Hall, Frank Nimphius, Grant Ronald, and Shay Shmeltzer.

5 comments:

Jake said...

You lived and worked in Pittsburgh, my hometown? Odd, considering the small size and location, but I assume it's somehow related to CMU or another university. What an odd place to get the American experience.

Where's the original "Office" on your list of funny British comedy?

For the record, I love Australia.

Anonymous said...

Well, it's too late for two of the people on your blogtag list, but could you maybe privately contact the other 6 and ask them nicely not to proliferate this rubbish any further.

Go look at OraNA and see if you can see anything actually newsworthy... because right now, it's bogged down in a bazillion '8 complete bits of trivia' posts.

This is spam, pure and simple. By all means share whatever you want with the Oracle community: that, after all, is what blogs are *for*. But this 8*8*8... nonsense is very, very silly. Worse, it's pushing good information out of the way for what amounts to sheer noise.

Chris Muir said...

Geez Howard, take a chill pill. It's just a bit of harmless fun after Christmas.

I know I've enjoyed the experience in learning some interesting facts about other Oracle bloggers. And given my web stats show just over 400 other people have bothered to read my "tag" post in the last few days, shows your point of view is just that, your point of view.

CM.

Anonymous said...

Chris, you're blog seems to be so good at causing ruptions! (a'la your Apex debate).
My tu'pence worth is I don't personally propagate chains, however much of the linking that goes on in work communities can often be started by a common "non work" interest. So what consititure "good information"? I could point to a whole load of other blog posts that I would personally view as useless spam - (but not this ;o) )

Chris Muir said...

Well, as I like to say, it keeps me off the streets.

Looking back on it now, the blog "ruptions" (or was that "erruptions?") have been particularly good in helping me seeing which way the wind blows, to test my opinions and hear great opinions from other bloggers and the reader community. Sometime my opinions are right, sometimes wrong, sometimes short sighted, and sometimes just need a tweek here and there.

As for "good information" and blogs, I guess the reader has just to remember, it's not their blog. If they don't like it, tune out.

Meanwhile this exercise in "tagging" has been particularly good for me as it has taken away some of the elitism that shrouds Oracle employees and other bloggers. Great to see many are dedicated parents, or musicians, or love football, love traveling, and so on. For instance I know now not to offer you a nip of scotch as swap for those pints I owe you next time we catch up ;)

CM.